Borderline
by Hamstadini
Summary: So overdone, it doesn't even need a summary. Oh, and RS.


**Disclaimer: I don't own EVA. All I do is write for free at the moment. I could be out there, writing novels, short stories, and screenplays, but out of the goodness of my heart, I take time and energy out of my life to regale you with stories from my mind – FOR FREE. You should be grateful. :-P In any case, I present you with…**

Borderline by Nathan Yuen

(Note: This takes place in Manga Volume 5, after the huge party celebrating Misato's promotion and Asuka's move. And I don't condone underage drinking. There's a reason why you are allowed to drink AFTER you're allowed to vote, people.)

For Toji Suzuhara, the night before was a blast. Even though he didn't discuss "battle plans" for the upcoming midterms with his cohorts, Kensuke Aida and Shinji Ikari, he was satisfied with the missions he did accomplish: he got to see Misato, he unveiled the true nature of that bitch Asuka to her crush Mister Kaji, and generally had fun carousing the night away with the entire gang. He'd even managed to slip in a few drinks of sake while he was at it.

But such entertainment came at a cost. And for Toji, that cost was waking up at precisely ten minutes after school began, and running there while still hung over.

_Damn, da class rep's gonna tear me a new one, _the thought made Toji's stomach even more sour, _'less_ _she's too hung over ta notice herself._ He shook his head in amusement, remembering how astounded he felt at seeing how much the petite girl could put away.

His astonishment turned to apprehension as he skidded in front of the door marked 2-A. _All right, now for da excuse._ Family emergency? Too dire. Couldn't find homework? Too delinquent. Detour due to construction? Might work – the city is constantly being rebuilt after Angel attacks, so it wouldn't be suspicious.

Taking a deep breath before the plunge, Toji slid the door open. He began to say, "Sorry I-" then stopped.

It was dead quiet when he had opened the door. Not even the teacher was talking. Toji peered closely at several faces and discovered them staring slack-jawed at the far side of the room. Toji looked in that direction to find Rei Ayanami making out with Shinji.

_Rei Ayanami_ was making out with Shinji.

Rei Ayanami was _making out_ with Shinji.

Rei Ayanami was making out with _Shinji._

The wtfness of the scene tapped Toji's brain with all the subtlety of a freight train smashing a gadfly, allowing gravity to coax his jaw to the floor. Along with the rest of his body.

Indeed the cyan-haired girl had her arms wrapped around Shinji's neck, her lips practically massaging his. While he had his arms lightly resting against hers, he looked too caught up in the moment to resist her. Judging from Rei's performance during the "session," Toji doubted that any warm-blooded male would be able to resist those lips… and any warm-blooded female would be hard-pressed to try.

From his spot on the floor, Toji absently thought, _I wonda if she can perform a tonsillectomy wit' dat tongue._

Asuka was the first to break the petrified silence. "What the HELL do you think you're doing?"

Ayanami snapped away from her embrace with Shinji and cracked Asuka to the side with a whiplike slap, retorting, "Whatever I want to, bitch!"

It barely even sounded like the eerily quiet girl that Toji had become accustomed to.

"That's enough, Ayanami!" The teacher started, rising out of his seat. "Grab two buckets and stand outside – now!"

The cyan-haired girl actually turned her nose up – with a smile. "Bite me."

Toji had never seen the teacher as anything more than a tepid dunderhead who would ramble on about Second Impact. Now the old man had the aura of a boiling thunderhead cloud, ready to cut loose with some lightning. The students leaned back in their seats, fearful as if their one-timid professor was going to start spewing magma.

Instead, he pointed a trembling finger at the door, and like a judge sentencing a mass-murderer of the highest scale, declared, "The dean. NOW."

The girl simply blew off her fingernails, wiped them on her shirt, and gave the enraged teacher an impetuous grin. "Fine. It's not like I learn anything in this dump anyway," she said before skipping out the door.

Silence had a two-minute tyranny over the classroom as its subjects tried to process through what the hell just happened. The teacher overthrew the regime by growling, "Soryu, head back to your seat."

The girl rose, redder than her hair. "The hell I will. I'm going to follow that bitch and teach her a lesson!"

The teacher bridged his hands in front of his face, looking like an even more menacing version of the Commander of NERV. "The way I see it, Soryu, you have two choices. You can go back to your seat in ten-seconds' time, or you can be thrown bodily out the nearest window. It is your decision."

Thoroughly cowed but not wanting to show it, Asuka harrumphed and stomped back to her seat, ignoring the glaring handprint on her cheek.

Then the teacher focused on the student near the entryway. "Pick yourself up off the floor, Suzuhara. Don't sit there like a pissant all day."

Toji scrambled. He didn't know what a pissant was, but he guessed that he sure as hell didn't want to look like one.

After everyone had relatively regained their composure, the teacher adjusted his glasses, shuffled around some papers, and said, "Now, where were we…" and continued on as if nothing had happened.

The class had changed, however. For the first time, the students had witnessed the wrath of the sensei unleashed, and supposed that this incident from the upstart Ayanami had whittled away the temperament of their dear teacher. In short, they feared that anything could set him off now, and so they sat at rigid attention, eyes almost popping out of their sockets, not daring to breathe as the seconds ticked by. After their break bell rang and the teacher excused himself, Toji noticed with morbid amusement on the way to Shinji's desk that some students looked distinctly blue while others simply appeared to have passed out from asphyxiation.

After he dragged a chair over to the desk where Shinji and Kensuke were sitting, Toji crossed his arms and said midly, "So, Shinji… care ta fill us in?"

"Yeah," Kensuke agreed, hovering like a vulture, "What'd you do to make Ayanami go rogue like that?"

"Nothing!" Shinji squeaked. "I mean I haven't seen her since the dance – "

"Dance?" the two other boys said in unison, glaring at their victim.

"TRAINING!" Shinji protested. "Eva training!"

Kensuke sighed, shaking his head. "I knew NERV was holding out on us."

"Figures," Toji agreed. "'Course, if they made it public dat da pilot's get ta dance wit' da ladies, you'd have guys from all ova' da world fighting ta join up. Not exactly conductive in dis day an' age, if ya know what I mean."

As the two students glared at their conscripted friend, Shinji protested, "Anyway, I didn't do anything! I haven't even seen her since the last angel attack! And today, she shows up fifteen minutes late, walks over to my desk, pulls me to her, and-" Shinji stopped and stared into nothingness, his mind temporarily blue-screened.

"Yeah, I saw da fireworks." Toji commented. "Ya got dat on tape, Kensuke?"

The boy with the glasses caught his head in both of his hands, wailing, "I knew I forgot to do something!"

Toji patted him on the back sympathetically. "Ah well. I'm sure it's etched in da memory of Shinji here." He turned to the pilot. "How was it, eh?"

Shinji shuddered alive, and a blissful smile formed on his face. "There are no words."

Toji went from patting Kensuke on the back to slapping Shinji on the shoulder. "Congrats, man. Yer da first to get play from a girl."

Now it was Shinji's turn to stare at Toji. "You mean… you haven't? I thought after all this time…"

Toji waved off all suppositions. "'Ey, 'ey, 'ey! I'm just waiting for da right gal, ya know? I may look tough, but I have my morals."

The jock leaned forward conspiratorially. "Now dat dat's over with, can we start on da why? We ruled out Shinji's charms, so what?"

Kensuke's lenses gleamed as he pushed them up thoughtfully. "Maybe she's borderline bipolar disorder."

Shinji looked appalled. "But she's the most stable person I know."

Kensuke nodded. "Exactly. It's the ones that seem the most stable that are actually insane."

"Could be it," Toji said, although he had no idea what Kensuke was talking about.

Kensuke's next suggestion was more dubious. "Or it could be an evil twin."

Toji looked over at his long-time friend. "Get outta here!"

"But think about it," Kensuke protested, "According to Shinji here, Rei lives alone, she's got nothing on file, and she's familiar with Shinji's dad. Maybe he took her away from her real family, and her twin has come to exact revenge by impersonating her!"

"Yeah!" Shinji said readily. "Certainly sounds more believable than fighting messengers from heaven in biomechanical robots. And we all know how true THAT is," he finished pointedly.

Toji gave him a _look_ and shook his head. "Ah, yer jus' in denial dat yer gal may be wacko. Ah well, you can get the juice outta her when she comes back from da dean."

It was at that moment when they heard the teacher – who was three solid stories below them – roar, "WHAT? SHE SKIPPED OUT OF CLASS?"

-----

To Fuyutsuki, there were two types of people. Actually, he believed that there was a spectrum of people, with various strengths and weaknesses, but in the situation that he was in right now he believed in two types: those who weren't prepared in life, and those who were. Gendo Ikari fell into the latter category in a radical sense. Fuyutsuki suspected that even before Gendo Rokubungi heard of SEELE he was a master manipulator with the power to charm Yui Ikari into giving him a foothold into Kiel's confidence.

And then Kiel gave him the Dead Sea scrolls. Compared to all the little silver spoons that rich people were born with, Gendo got the Biggest Goddamn Platinum Spoon in Osaka ™. With those scrolls a comatose child could play the stock market, provided that he had a corrupt nurse to handle transactions.

Gendo used those scrolls to predict major events in Tokyo-3, and now he was nigh unflappable, and secretly smug about it.

So when an agent from Section 2 burst into the Commander's office and interrupted his brooding time to say "The First Child has physically intimate with the Third Child," Fuyutsuki knew he was the sole witness to a historical event, and mentally readied himself for the experience of a lifetime.

True to his nature, Ikari didn't react. He sat there, hands bridged in front of his face, as still as if he were carved from a mountainside. As the agent broke the news, Ikari remained completely expressionless.

So his glasses did the expressions for him.

They slid down his nose, tumbled off the tops of his hands, bounced off the edge of the desk, twisted a full circle in a midair pirouette, and did a majestic somersault before diving lens first into the floor.

Were the glasses a swimmer, the desk a diving plank, the floor the swimming pool for the 2015 Summer Olympics, and Fuyutsuki a judge of said Olympics, Fuyutsuki would give the glasses a perfect ten.

Ikari began speaking before the echoing _tink_ of the glasses hitting the floor fully subsided. "I apologize. Could you repeat that? I believe I had a brief lapse of sanity because I thought you said-"

"The First Child has been physically intimate with the Third-"

Ikari shot the man. Then he proceeded to empty the entire clip as the agent stumbled back. Fuyutsuki was sure he didn't blink, but in one instant Gendo was in his poise and in the next he was firing from his desk.

_Wyatt Herb would be proud,_, Fuyutsuki thought absently as the roar of the gun subsided.

Through with venting his rage at being surprised, having to apologize, asking to repeat the information, and finally being interrupted all within a timespan of a minute, Ikari resumed his pose, ignoring the twitching body on the floor. "This…could be an obstacle," he finally declared. "Have Doctor Akagi informed of the situation, and have her review the information regarding last night's dummy plug programming. Anomalous readings should be recorded there, if any."

He got up and walked around the desk to stand to the body's side. "Organize a team to apprehend and retrieve the First Child. I would prefer if she was alive to explain herself, but that is an optional requirement."

He kicked the body in the side, and the prostate man groaned in response. "Stand on your own two feet and walk, " Ikari told the injured man. "You'll be joining them. Be thankful that I only used .45 caliber bullets this time."

Inwardly, Fuyutsuki sighed, once again thankful that he decreed that all agents don bulletproof vests before entering Ikari's office.

One never knew when the Commander was going to take his ire out on nonessential personnel, but that was what being prepared in life was all about.

----

The girl in question walked down the alleyway whistling a tune. After blatantly ditching school she meandered here and there, taking in sights and spewing insults at people who she thought deserved it.

She frowned in the middle of the alley. Something was nagging at the edge of her mind, as if she forgot to do something, but she couldn't remember what.

And that put her in a bad mood.

Fortunately, someone – or rather, several someones – showed up to break it. Three burly men, outfitted in sunglasses and military gear, moved in to block the end of the alley in front of her, and she knew that three more where coming in from behind. The man front and center – a guy who had bandaged ribs – asked "Are you Rei Ayanami?"

"That's me!" The girl affirmed brightly.

"We're from NERV, section two. If you would come with us, please." The man's imposing glare clashed with the girl's easygoing smile.

"Aw, so soon?" the girl cooed. "Why don't we have some fun first? I'm sure one of you big, strong men has got what I need." She reached down past her shirt collar to under her shirt… and tugged out a pair of leather gloves from God-knows-where.

"Don't want to chip a nail, you know," she remarked as she tugged on one of the gloves.

The lead man snarled, knowing that he was being played, and having been pushed to his breaking point by Commander Ikari, decided that he had enough for today. "Tasers!" he barked, and in one fluid motion the men drew their taser guns and fired.

Six electrified wires snaked toward their target, hissing as they streaked forward –

And then clattered impotent to the ground as they hit a wall of orange hexagons.

One man behind her – apparently a little slow on the uptake – gasped, "An AT field?"

The cyan-haired girl tugged on the other glove as she commented, "You know, it's terribly rude to interrupt a lady while she's dressing. Ah, there we go." She went into a fighting stance. "Shall we begin?"

A few moments later, it was all over. When the dust cleared, she was the only one standing among the bodies littered in the alleyway.

"Be grateful that I'm not in a killing mood right now," She said mildly, the last thing they heard before they lost consciousness and would haunt them for years to come.

That said, she remembered what she had to do, but wrinkled her nose at trying to pick her way across the bodies to the end of the alley. _It would be better to fly home._

So, using her AT field, she lifted herself up into the air, and smiled broadly as she headed back to Apartment 402.

She had someone who she had to give a rude awakening to.

TBC…

Author's Notes: Half of you know what's going on already, while have of you have pretty good guesses. Most of you have seen something like this already done, if not in EVA ficdom, then somewhere else. Star Trek has several episodes on this theme. But I thought, "what the hey- I'll try my hand at this anyway."

This is a little side project that I'm going to work on while I wait for "The Notebook" entries to upload. Hopefully , it'll be short, maybe about ten chapters or so. But I'm not making any promises – not about update times, lengths, or characterization.

I can tell you already that this is not going to be a humor fic all the way. I made everyone's reactions humorous because… well, people's reactions are funny when you turn their world upside down. That's the machina behind "Punk'd," after all.

And if you ARE going to leave a review, please leave your guesses till the next chapter. The wtfness will be revealed anyway.

Not being preread. I don't want to put my prereaders through any more angst.


End file.
